Investors: “We were defrauded” by Ecuador suit against Chevron

posted at 8:31 am on January 12, 2013 by Jazz Shaw

Long time readers will recall our coverage over the last two years of the efforts of so-called environmentalists in Ecuador – in league with their brethren in the US – to pick the pockets of Chevron in a rather poorly rigged lawsuit. Their hopes of snagging billions of dollars from the American energy giant have met one setback after another in every court outside of the one they purchased in their home country, but what little credibility they had has taken another blow. An investment fund which funneled millions of dollars into their legal costs with the understanding that they would get a cut of the plunder on the back end has now determined that they’ve been bamboozled.

Burford Capital, a $300 million publicly-traded fund that invests in lawsuits, has accused representatives of the Ecuadorians who are suing Chevron in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, of having defrauded the firm into investing in their case two years ago…

“We believe that you and particularly your U.S. representatives engaged in a multi-month scheme to deceive and defraud in order to secure desperately needed funding,” the letter states, “all the while concealing material information and misrepresenting critical facts in the fear that we would have walked away had we known the true state of affairs.”…

On October 31, 2010, Burford gave the plaintiffs $4 million in financing as the first tranche in what was planned to become a $15 million investment. In exchange it received a 1.5% stake of any recovery, which was to rise to a 5.5% stake upon full funding.

First off – and maybe I’m just a babe in the wood here – I had no idea that investment groups were in the practice of funding the legal costs of lawsuits which didn’t involve them in any fashion purely as speculation and a chance at taking a slice of the profits. Is that really “a thing” today? I mean, I don’t want to dredge up the whole specter of “vulture capitalism” here, but this has to be about as good of a fit for the description as one could imagine.

With that said, I have to note that I’m not exactly feeling a lot of sympathy for Burford and their investors at this point. We can ignore for the moment the fact that they were betting on a group of envirowhackjobs who were engaged in what appears to be, in my opinion, a highly dubious attempt to rip off an American company. Just from a straight business perspective, before you dump millions of dollars of your investors’ funds into any endeavor, you’d check it out pretty carefully, no? You wouldn’t throw all of your cash at some great business investment opportunity before investigating and finding out that it was actually a chop shop.

So even if your business does involve funding lawsuits, the information has been out there for ages showing that this particular claim was being described as a blatant scam by many observers. Should we now feel sorry for you if the Ecuadorians take your money as well and head for the hills?

We need to stop this romanticizing of Free Enterprise as some kind of noble endeavor. It’s about making money and euphemising (?) the seedier aspects of it doesn’t absolve much of it from what it is…making $. It’s far more preferable to Socialism but, come on, it is what it is…caveat emptor.

The reality is that the big money’s to be had with lawyers, politicians, bankers and major corporations. And as long as they’re not doing anything patently illegal (theft, murder, embezzlement, etc.), then that’s their business.

“Champerty” is the “maintenance” of a person in a lawsuit on condition that the subject matter of the action is to be shared with the maintainer. Among laypersons, this is known as “buying into someone else’s lawsuit.” Used to be unethical. Oh, well.

First off – and maybe I’m just a babe in the wood here – I had no idea that investment groups were in the practice of funding the legal costs of lawsuits which didn’t involve them in any fashion purely as speculation and a chance at taking a slice of the profits. Is that really “a thing” today? I mean, I don’t want to dredge up the whole specter of “vulture capitalism” here, but this has to be about as good of a fit for the description as one could imagine.

I’m at a loss for the word, but this sort of thing is illegal.

But when you’re in an era where some one can wave a blatantly illegal item on national television or can seriously debate end runs around the public debt, or deem another branch of government to not be in session, the entire concept of the rule of law has been thrown out the window.

We need to stop this romanticizing of Free Enterprise as some kind of noble endeavor. It’s about making money and euphemising (?) the seedier aspects of it doesn’t absolve much of it from what it is…making $. It’s far more preferable to Socialism but, come on, it is what it is…caveat emptor.

The reality is that the big money’s to be had with lawyers, politicians, bankers and major corporations. And as long as they’re not doing anything patently illegal (theft, murder, embezzlement, etc.), then that’s their business.

Dr. ZhivBlago on January 12, 2013 at 9:09 AM

Whatever this is, it’s not “capitalism” at all. It’s someone seeking to profit from a fraudulent lawsuit, which back in the day constituted unethical champerty. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; there are a lot of things that used to be considered unethical or immoral that no longer are.

Yes, lending to plaintiffs is common. Just do a search. The left today, like these investors, has no idea about the wolves they are dealing with.

Second, the real left was heartbroken when the Soviets fell.

They were sickened at the idea that the US was the only “superpower” and actually more upset than our former adversaries.

You missed it, but many of them wished it had been the US. This went on while they watch the Bush administration flex muscles. I spoke to some at the time. You see, the contention is that the US, as a player in capitalism, generally is a mischief maker and needs to be reigned it just as Russia was. They are anti-Israel and mostly hate every US client state.

How do knock down all the bowling pins with the ten foot tall US in front of them? The wolves have to rip up the US but we have a military industrial complex and a feeling of mission to the world. Getting another Viet Nam started in Iraq did not work with the surge. Despondency set in.

Then came two gifts. The 2008 meltdown and Barack Obama!

Now the Fox crew and others are mystified that the left isn’t worried about our economic milestones like entitlements and debt.

They want our boys home and they want to US to be unable to spend like mad “improving” the world. Sticking us with tons of bills so the defense department has less money than NYPD is a good way to pacify the US. We fall like Russia and the left’s heroes around the world have one less impediment.

Wait for the US left (esp, the Jews) to see the characters they are empowering.

Sorry about the typos. Should have been “economic millstones” and “..They (the left)…want our boys home..”.

And some pundits have it right.

This administration wants us to be at best, primus inter pares among the western and European nations. Adventures like Iraq have to be kept off the table. The green energy failure has been a real setback.

Saving the US economy with a fossil energy boom is the latest problem for them. It would be wonderful for this administration in fighting all our economic woes.

If this administration were actually interested in the power and success of the US, that is.

We need to stop this romanticizing of Free Enterprise as some kind of noble endeavor. It’s about making money and euphemising (?) the seedier aspects of it doesn’t absolve much of it from what it is…making $. It’s far more preferable to Socialism but, come on, it is what it is…caveat emptor.

The reality is that the big money’s to be had with lawyers, politicians, bankers and major corporations. And as long as they’re not doing anything patently illegal (theft, murder, embezzlement, etc.), then that’s their business.

Dr. ZhivBlago on January 12, 2013 at 9:09 AM

Actually, Doc, what you’ve just described is syndicalist socialism. In which governments and “activists” pick who is allowed to succeed, and who is forced to fail. And use the power of government to make it happen.

Burford falls into the “rent-seeker” category. A private group which allows the “activists” to tell it what to do in the hope of a big payout- and also making sure that nobody else gets to play. Syndicalism, by definition, creates monopolies, with those “in the club” protected by the government forces they kowtow to.

Syndicalist socialism, by the way, was the preferred economic/social model of European “national socialists”, aka fascists, going back to Mussolini. Not to mention He Who Must Not Be Named, and I’m not talking about Voldemort.

When you call it any kind of “capitalism”, you are making the fascists very happy. Because you’re blaming their facilitators, and their victims, rather than placing the blame where it belongs. On the fascists themselves.

Remember- they really like you not to understand their actual methods, and objectives. It makes it that much easier for them to rule you.

I had no idea that investment groups were in the practice of funding the legal costs of lawsuits which didn’t involve them in any fashion purely as speculation and a chance at taking a slice of the profits. Is that really “a thing” today? I mean, I don’t want to dredge up the whole specter of “vulture capitalism” here, but this has to be about as good of a fit for the description as one could imagine.

I likewise was unaware that such funds exist. However I’m not surprised. It takes quite a bit of money to troll</strike advertise for clients on all the cable channels be it for asbestos or drug side effects. We all have gotten those class action lawsuit notices where we have supposedly been harmed by the actions of some company and are to share in the results of some lawsuit. We will get a buck ninety eight while the law firm representing us will get millions. Makes sense there would be investment funds to bankroll the ambulance chasers. Makes sense but still seems slimy and wrong.

I likewise was unaware that such funds exist. However I’m not surprised. It takes quite a bit of money to troll advertise for clients on all the cable channels be it for asbestos or drug side effects. We all have gotten those class action lawsuit notices where we have supposedly been harmed by the actions of some company and are to share in the results of some lawsuit. We will get a buck ninety eight while the law firm representing us will get millions. Makes sense there would be investment funds to bankroll the ambulance chasers. Makes sense but still seems slimy and wrong.

Well just take the left’s caricature of George W. Bush and you have an idea of what the real left wants to prevent for the future.

Forget the diversity, help the poor and the American dream for everyone. They don’t want the US military or industry messing up the world for them. His American constituencies be damned.

OK. Do any of his actions really help his “base”?

Don’t blame unions, women, black Americans or the poor for this administration. They are just being used. He is importing Latinos to internationalize the country to continue the program. Now does that make any sense in this economy?

Look at the mess with crack in the US. Look at Chicago. He was a community organizer and all I will say is that it must have convinced him that the poor are worthless. This is completely contrary to what I would be doing. The whole core of poverty is costing the US a mint. I worked with those people on the bottom. The social costs are staggering. Forget unemployment and healthcare but that is part of it. We can’t keep locking them up at $30 to $60K a head per year and funding an army for law enforcement.

And all of those groups would welcome an aggressive energy boom even if we had special taxes on gasoline to switch to nat gas and elec. or export our surplus.

But then we have Al Gore and climate problems and his oil allies who hate Israel. Snaps together, does it not?

I see your point, and can’t deny that is an aspect of much of what’s going on.

But, I’m pretty sure that Capitalists have made enormous sums of money by influencing (lobbying, schmoozing, bribing) politicians all over the world for a lot longer than Socialists have had any real power anywhere.

“America’s business is business” states it succinctly.

So, whether Socialists are in bed with high rollers, or Democrats, or Republicans, does it really matter?

If government can help improve the economic structure of our country by helping business, then what’s the problem?

I maintain that we have to be realistic, and not to confuse the more pure forms of free enterprise at the mom and pop level with the different demands (and morality?) of those at the highest financial levels.

As always, the prospect of the State controlling the means of production is scary to us here, but this is a potential Pandora’s box that may have been opened long ago. What used to benefit us, may enslave us in the future?

I recently learned that non-recourse funding of the costs of big lawsuits is quite common, which makes it quite a bit easier to be a plaintiff’s lawyer. It also gives the lawyer a second check on the validity of the lawsuit; i.e. the financiers presumably value the lawsuit.

However, it also seems to me that once you have taken an equity position in a lawsuit that you now own a piece of all of the consequences including the countersuit for frivolous litigation in this case. It just may be that this hedge fund is trying to proclaim its innocence of the Ecuador shenanigans to avoid liability for the damages wrongfully inflicted on Chevron rather than to recover its investment. Its investment is probably already gone anyway. I hope they fail and have to pony up the big bucks to Chevron for the expense of their ravenousness.

My company had a conference in Texas. In the same conference hotel complex, there was a conference for lawyers that work aircraft accident litigation. 500 lawyers. I know several top aircraft factory execs. i bet there is more income for the top 50 lawyers than the top 50 builders execs.

leeches.
In product liability, it seems like a company is guilty of negligence until proven innocent. So they shake down a builder who settles to get rid of the nuisance.

My company had a conference in Texas. In the same conference hotel complex, there was a conference for lawyers that work aircraft accident litigation. 500 lawyers. I know several top aircraft factory execs. i bet there is more income for the top 50 lawyers than the top 50 builders execs.

leeches.
In product liability, it seems like a company is guilty of negligence until proven innocent. So they shake down a builder who settles to get rid of the nuisance.

There’s not much difference between these “investors” and your average personal injury attorney who fattens themselves on the misery of others. Is it legal? Sure. Is it right? Depends on how shallow your morals are.

Here’s a story from last year from the New York Times (I know, but the story’s pretty even-handed) about the growth of Buford Capital and other firms providing funding for lawsuits. Apparently, there’s already been efforts by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Congress to limit the practice, under the idea that if you start turning lawsuits into a third-party for-profit venture, you’re going to get a ton more frivolous suits in hopes of hitting a big payday for your investors.

However, it should also be noted that this is a “highest level” example of a serious problem, i.e. the nuisance lawsuit, which is an abuse of the courts and an onus upon the taxpayer and ultimately the end consumer of the defendant’s product. That it is occurring overseas does not ameliorate Burford’s stance as a participant.

Further, this is also most probably mismanagement of Burford’s investor’s dollars. As a “publicly traded” firm, management is shielded from liability by the corporate structure, but one can hope this adventure at least serves as a career-ending resume blemish.

First off – and maybe I’m just a babe in the wood here – I had no idea that investment groups were in the practice of funding the legal costs of lawsuits which didn’t involve them in any fashion purely as speculation and a chance at taking a slice of the profits. Is that really “a thing” today? I mean, I don’t want to dredge up the whole specter of “vulture capitalism” here, but this has to be about as good of a fit for the description as one could imagine.

I can’t claim I was really aware of this per se, but there are whole companies in the tech world that produce absolutely nothing at all, and their whole purpose is to buy out some company that actually innovated something and try to sue anyone else who came up with a similar idea. They show up on paper as “intellectual property” holding companies.

So it makes sense that there would be companies just like this.

A great example was the company that bought SCO Unix as Linux was growing fast, so that they could then try to sue every Linux distributor or customer as “stealing” their intellectual property, and force them all to pay licensing fees based on bogus claims.

Unfortunately — for them — SCO Unix only had the rights to distribute Unix, not the full rights. Those belonged to Novell, and they were completely unable to show where Novell had transferred those rights to SCO. So they were trying to sue based on rights they didn’t actually have. They also couldn’t really prove any infringement by any Linux developers. But their strategy appeared to rely not so much on being able to win in court as in being able to intimidate through threats of lawsuits and making investors in Linux companies nervous enough to pay the licensing fees just to make them go away.

And then you have “reputable” companies that make “irreputable” claims, such as when British Telecom examined their old patents and found that one kinda sorta sounded a bit like hyperlinks on the World Wide Web. They tried to claim that the Web was based on their technology, and started hitting people up for licensing.

You may not have heard about it, because it didn’t go well for them. Plenty of people found where BT was hardly the first to come up with ideas similar to hyperlinks, and that was the end of their attempts to make cash off the work of others.

So the business of lawsuits definitely has a seamier side. As long as there’s a big payoff at the end of the day, there will always be those willing to invest for a chance at that big payoff. And they don’t care at all whether the claims or suit is fair. They just care about whether the odds of winning make the investment worthwhile.

Capitalism? I suppose. But it seems uncomfortably close to an investor group that funds muggers, or that supports corrupt policemen. There’s nothing inherently wrong with making money, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with some ways of making money.

You borrow against ‘promised future income’ – directly – and then you pay it back with interest. In this case, the ‘payday day’ isn’t set but after researching the loan application Burford Capital must have decided to assume the risk – ostensibly based on fraudulent information provided by the ‘borrower(s)’ in hindsight.

The payday loan centers take all of your required info and decides if they’ll loan you money to be paid back, with interest, on ‘payday’. Same thing here – sans a precise repay date.

There’s only like a million payday loan centers in America from sea to shining sea.

*sheesh*

Then there’s businesses like J.G. Wentworth — who gives you a small percentage of your money while they keep all the rest of it as it comes in after annuities, law suit victories, and structured settlements, etc., etc.

They’ve all been around in some iteration or another for the patronage of consumers for decades. How long have banks been providing loans for the enterprising endeavors of their customers/clients? Since — forever!?

None of it is required by law on either side of the coin. No one forces you to lend and no one forces you to borrow. It is strictly voluntary and strictly an independently thought out decision to assume the risks involved whether lending or borrowing. The only ‘force’ used is the ‘force of law’ in oversight of operating financial institutions and conducting such financial transactions on the legal up-and-up.

Hate Capitalism, do ya? Think it’s ‘vulture capitalism’ to freely and voluntarily engage in such business practices and the free and voluntary patronage of such businesses?

THEN GTFO AND GO LIVE IN ANOTHER COUNTRY WHERE THE SPECTER OF EVIL CAPITALISM IS NONEXISTENT.

Seriously. GTFO!

Why is this non-story story even posted on Hotair?

To rip on the lender who was ‘bamboozled’ – because they operate a successful business that people voluntarily avail themselves of?

I maintain that we have to be realistic, and not to confuse the more pure forms of free enterprise at the mom and pop level with the different demands (and morality?) of those at the highest financial levels.

As always, the prospect of the State controlling the means of production is scary to us here, but this is a potential Pandora’s box that may have been opened long ago. What used to benefit us, may enslave us in the future?

Dr. ZhivBlago on January 12, 2013 at 10:39 AM

We have no other time in the history of the Unites States where the government has deeply entrenched itself in our economy.

Yet for all its alleged “help”, unemployment is 7.8%, we have trillion dollar deficits, our labor force as a percentage of Americans is the lowest its been in the last 20 years, and there is no end in sight. From Amtrak to the Post Office to solar subsidies, the Government’s poisoned thumb has killed every industry it has “helped”.

In English/Canadian and other common law jurisdictions this sort of conduct was proscibed under the doctrines of Champery, Maintenance and Barratry. They were illegal and tortious behaviour and unethical. Though a bit old-fashioned they still exist, but I don’t know whether they still exist in the US. If not, they should, given the ethical failings of the lawyers involved in the cases.